The Ethereum network'south long-planned upgrade to a scalable, proof-of-stake consensus model grows closer as developers ready a date for the Altair upgrade.

Altair, which is described as the commencement mainnet upgrade to the Buoy Chain, is scheduled to take place at epoch 74240, or roughly Oct. 27, co-ordinate to Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan.

Ryan described the technical upgrade as follows:

"This upgrade brings light-customer back up to the core consensus, cleans up buoy state incentive bookkeeping, fixes some problems with validator incentives and steps up the castigating params as per EIP-2982."

EIP-2982 introduces "punitive parameters" to ensure that the proof-of-stake protocol is economically secure. "Inactivity leak" and "slashing" are the ii proposed penalties nether the improvement proposal.

Ethereum's London difficult fork arrived near on schedule on Aug. five, ushering in the highly predictable EIP 1559 proposal. Proponents touted EIP-1559 as the deflationary switch because it involved burning base fees, thereby reducing the circulating supply of ETH.

Related: Ethereum alternatives and layer-one solutions see steady gains in September

Joseph Lubin, who co-founded Ethereum before moving on to ConsenSys, said London puts ETH on runway to become "ultrasound money." The concept of "sound" or "ultrasound" money was popularized by the Bitcoin (BTC) community and refers to an asset that is not susceptible to a sudden depreciation in value or purchasing power.

The ETH price was down sharply on Tuesday, as cryptocurrencies sold off along with other adventure assets, including stocks. ETH was last seen trading at $two,822, having declined 6.five% on the 24-hour interval.